The Old Hampton Parsonage

By Rev. Roland D. Sawyer

Hampton Union, {date unknown}

Perhaps the most interesting of the Lost Houses of Hampton, and the one that Rev. Mr. Jones in 1925 was anxious to get funds to rebuild on [Meeting House] Memorial Green land, was the Old Parsonage. Of this building this week, give the picture, above.

It was not the home of Rev. Stephen Bachiler, the first pastor, but was the home of Rev. Timothy Dalton, the first teacher and associate of Mr. Bachiler, and who came to Hampton only a few months following Mr. Bachiler, in 1639.

Mr. Dalton was a man of some means, warmly endorsed by the Boston group, and for him the parsonage was built at the right end of Memorial Green and across the new road (Park Avenue).

There was bad feeling from the first between Mr. Bachilor and Mr. Dalton.

Mr. Dalton was born in England in 1577, graduated from Cambridge College there, came to New England, was made pastor at Dedham, Mass. in 1637. His parsonage was built in 1639 and was a fine house for the time and was occupied later by his successors.

However, it had not been used as a parsonage for some time in 1767 and when Mr. Thayer was coming as pastor it was rebuilt and stood as the picture shows it, and was used til 1871 though in its latter days as a dwelling house and rented by the town.

The Olde Parsonage
Meeting House Green
Built 1693
Rebuilt 1767 (photo above)
Burned 1924[Above photo not in original article.]

January, 1767, a Parish meeting vote to rebuild the parsonage into a house 40 feet long and 32 feet wide. The price was set by vote and it was also voted that the men working upon it should have one gallon of rum per day.

As much of the lumber in the old parsonage that was good was to be used. Thus the 1767 parsonage had in it some of the lumber of the Dalton Parsonage of 1639. The frame was of heavy hewed oak, and it was built to stay.

Rev. Timothy Dalton was the younger brother of Philemon Dalton.

His one child, little Timothy, died at the age of 12 in the Dalton Parsonage, and Jasper Blake, who had married the sister of the Dalton brothers, named a son "Timothy" after little Timothy and Mr. Dalton gave to Mr. Blake 100 acres of his 300 acre farm.

Edmund Willoughby Toppan, Hampton's earliest historian, born, 1808 and dying in the old Toppan House in 1845, wrote out sketches of the 125 earliest settlers, the two Daltons among them.

The old parsonage, seen in the cut, housed Rev. Ebenezer Thayer, pastor 1765 to 1792; Rev. Josiah Webster and others with their families.